I agree with @junior-pilot, they look good and I like them. OK, they remind me a bit of the episode from Penguins of Madagascar where King Julien’s throne made explosions every time someone said “Julien” so it might be a bit silly but hey, what is wrong with that? It improves the show without doing any harm to racing and if there were more such cool features in F1, then no one would ask for DRS and similar gimmicks.

@lockup I agree, you cannot ignore the facts, racism still exists and there is no reason to think that it exists only outside of F1 or that the proportion of prejudiced people in F1 is significantly smaller than in the whole society:

It is a nonissue but it once again makes you ask whether those girls should be there at all. The girl has said that her employee told her to go up there so she did without thinking about it a lot.

It is not a problem that beautiful girls are standing beside drivers on the grid or on the podium but “I have no clue about F1 and I am standing here because I get paid for it” is often just written all over their faces. So I think the concept should be changed. Yesterday I had a discussion with a friend about this topic and he said that grid girls should be replaced by fans like the kids in football. I think it is an idea that should be considered.

1) All the great drivers get more criticism than the “decent” ones, you can say the same thing about Schumacher or Alonso. Partly it is because they get much more attention, their every step is closely watched and social media has only increased the exposure (drivers like Senna would probably get even more flak nowadays). It could also be that the best drivers tend to be closer to the limit – not only on the track – and sometimes they overstep the
bounds.

2) If we are talking about the British fans, then I have noticed that the “dissidents” are particularly active on the Internet. For instance, you can find a lot of scathing comments about Vettel in German and I assume it’s the same in the UK – those fans, who don’t like their local heroes, tend to be particularly loud.

3) Some fans are simply unintelligent and do not get that a driver’s tattoos and his appearance have nothing to do with his driving. It is OK not to like tattoos (I do not like them too) but it is his own choice to have them and they do not make him a worse driver or a worse man.

4) Racism is still alive so I guess there are at least some people, who simply do not like him because he is black but do not admit it and hide their phobia behind other reasons.

5) Hamilton is not perfect and sometimes he says or does controversial things. That does not mean he is a bad person but sometimes the criticism makes sense.

6) F1 is about passion and you cannot really expect Vettel fans or Rosberg fans to love Hamilton. However, some fans are able to express their opinions in an intelligent way and some are not.

The pair, who have been practicing to learn the Shanghai track on their son’s Playstations, are this weekend expected at the team’s Faenza HQ where they will go through a crash course on the nuances of the STR10 and also spend time on the simulator.

I kept watching it after the first 90 seconds but just couldn’t focus on the song or the video, I guess I started thinking about Bernie (can’t think why). I guess you have to drink before watching / listening to this. And I never drink that much.

I lost respect for Joe Saward when “the silent majority” (that is, three pro-government lobbyists) in Bahrain convinced him that everything was fine and well in their country. And I lost respect for Christian Sylt when he claimed that a 14-word comment on an F1F article was “highly damaging” to his “reputation and credibility”. This silly “rivalry” only once again reminds me why I am an F1 Fanatic supporter and also pay for Autosport Plus instead of spending these pounds to support the likes of Saward and Sylt.

Professional journalists would never lower themselves to this. I read F1 blogs / websites because I want to know what is going on in F1, what are the stories behind news and I want to read reasonable, well-written opinions. If I want to have some fun, then I go to SniffPetrol but I am certainly not interested in pillow fights between self-proclaimed F1 experts.

For sure, some of their articles or opinions might still be worth reading but they are certainly not among my top F1 news sources.

@andae23 Sylt sometimes comments on F1F (so he at leasts contributes to high-quality journalism by giving F1F a few clicks :)) but I think he does not have an account.

Somehow I have not been able to stop thinking about F1 so far. So I have been reading F1 news, magazines, and F1F 2014 season review articles. I was even watching the 2005 season review yesterday! I guess I will hibernate in January…

I think I am going to watch some winter sports on TV, too. I particularly like bobsleigh and I am a big fan of Steven Holcomb’s team.

Lately I have also been reading Matthew Mitcham’s “Twists and Turns”, it is a very inspirational sports story.

My trip to the 2014 German Grand Prix was certainly my personal highlight of the year. It was an adventure against the odds. The trip was too expensive, too hot and at first I could not find anyone to substitute me at work. Still, I have never regretted the decision to go.

We had the best seats, “Südtribüne Oberrang” above the Motodrom, which means that we could overlook at least half of the track from there. That said, we did not see any overtaking as it normally happens in the other parts of the circuit and the big TV screen was a bit too far away for my liking. If you want to see some overtaking or just be close to the cars, then you should pick a different sector.

Saturday was particularly hot. I spent too much time in the sun and the heat, got sunburned and did not sleep well after that. The spectators in the uncovered grandstands obviously had it even worse. The traffic also could have been better as we had to wait in the queue for one hour to get out of the car park after the race.

Yet the positives far outweighed the negatives. The fans (particularly the supporters of Vettel) created a great atmosphere, GP2 and GP3 drivers were signing autographs after FP3, the junk food on-site tasted OK and the girl, who sold me Mercedes merchandise, was really nice even if she did not seem to know the difference between Mercedes and McLaren.

The wet GP2 race on Sunday was fun to watch. During the F1 drivers parade, the German drivers stopped below our grandstands, gave TV interviews and threw some caps into the crowd (Vettel even made a little run to get closer to the fans). Hockenheimring radio played fitting songs during the breaks, such as “Sunshine Reggae” and “Walking on Sunshine”. All in all, it was a great weekend that I will never forget.

Here is a video that I took at Hockenheim this year. I did not think it was worth sharing back then but now I just want to say that I was worried about the safety of marshals that were taking care of Adrian Sutil’s car and I think the video shows why: